Sunday, November 27, 2016

Back
in “A Reflection on Season Three,” I concluded with the bold statement that I
still believe it to be the worst season of the entire show, despite having a
myriad of positive, amazing qualities.We still have ten more seasons to watch and my thoughts could very well
change (particularly when we finally reach that much-reviled season thirteen
that fans are always shitting all over), but at this moment in time, I’m
sticking to what I said and I’m also saying that, out of the first four
seasons, season three was the weakest.This only goes to further strengthen my point that season four is a
tremendous accomplishment and a miraculous example of a television show pulling
itself up from the depths of near-cancellation (indeed, I read that during
season three, the show was at risk of being cancelled due to low viewers) and
suddenly taking off like a shot and producing an absolutely incredible season
of television for all to enjoy.

Nearly
everything about season four works, start to finish.While season three (and, to some extent,
season two right before it) suffered a lot from a feeling of “Is this a
serialized show or is it self-contained storylines?”, season four corrects that
immediately by announcing right off the bat that this is a nighttime soap, like
its parent series.If you wanna keep up
with what’s going on with the characters and the stories, you gotta make sure
to watch every week, or else you’ll be lost.While season three would get some exciting ongoing storylines revved up and
then suddenly interrupt them for bizarre standalone eps like The Three Sisters, Reunion, Cricket, or the
absolutely awful Silver Shadows,
season four doesn’t pull any of that crap.Stories build and grow from the start of the season to the finale, and I
truly believe that all the writers and producers sat down at the start of the
season and mapped out a grand season Bible for the whole year.

God,
where to start?I suppose I’ll start
with the opening eps of the season and how they nicely tidy up affairs from the
concluding moments of season two.After someone working at Knots Landing Motors
cut the brakes on Sid Fairgate’s car, we then spent the entire third season not
even mentioning that or worrying about who did it, which felt rather
bizarre.Season four makes the correct
choice to wrap up that storyline in the first five episodes of the season, from
A Brand New Dayto Catharsis.I appreciated that clearly someone behind the
scenes (maybe Peter Dunne?) recognized that we had a dangling thread that had
never been wrapped up and so the show went to work concluding that storyline so
that the character of Karen can move on from that tragedy and the show itself
can proceed with new business and new storylines.

After
that, we had our very best use of crossovers from Dallas to KL and vice
versa ever.That’s right, the double whammy of the Dallas episodeJock’s Willfollowed by the KL
episode New Beginnings is the
best use of the two shows working off of each other that I have ever seen, and
if you only pick one Interlude (I mean, besides those four Interludes we
covered before the KL Pilot, which I
encourage everyone to watch before starting off the series to get to know the
rich back stories of Gary and Val) to watch while powering through the KL series, make it Jock’s Will.In fact, as I
pointed out during my write-ups on those two eps, if you really just watch the
episode Catharsisand then
immediately jump into New Beginnings,
you are missing some important information about the contents of Jock Ewing’s
will and how it effects Gary and you may find yourself rather confused.So, if ever there was an Interlude that I
would call essential, it is Jock’s Will.

From
Jock’s Willto New Beginnings, we have Patrick Duffy and Larry Hagman crossing
over for the final time, also marking the final time that any Dallas characters get to cross over to KL.The title of the ep is
dead-on, because it really does show a new beginning for the series.The scene where J.R. and Abby chat and she
agrees to keep Gary out of Texas also shows a torch being passed.At this point, Abs is officially turning into
the female J.R. of KL, and this scene
is essentially J.R. giving her permission to do so, saying there’s no need for
him to continue crossing over to this series because Abs has the situation well
in hand. Also,
the contents of Jock Ewing’s will have huge effects on what winds up happening
to Gary and Abs throughout the rest of the season.Suddenly they come into a lot of wealth and
the show is able to begin a metamorphosis that we will see continuing in season
five.Now there’s a little more glitz
and glamour, a little more wealth for characters to throw around, and the
reason it’s so well done is because it feels organic and realistic that this
would happen.The writers don’t just
suddenly have Gary come into millions from some outside force or having it fall
from the sky, but coming from a place we can really believe, his rich family
over in Texas.

Also,
while on the topic of the show becoming more glamorous, the writers do a
remarkable job of never making it feel like too much.Sure, Gary and Abs buy The Beach House and
suddenly have enough money to invest in new businesses or get Ciji’s voice
heard in the world, but it doesn’t feel like the show is betraying its core
identity from when it started.It still
feels homey and realistic to me, like a world I could live in myself.I still believe this series exists in the
real world while the parent series existed in a sorta fantasy world that I will
never be a part of.This is a skillful
balancing act that the writers pull off tremendously and which, to the best of
my memories, they continue to pull off throughout the next ten years.No matter how lavish or over-the-top the
stories get, it always still seems pretty grounded; it always feel like KL to me.

Season
four also brings us new characters through Ciji and Chip, Ciji introduced in Encountersand Chip introduced in Svengali, and both of them fuse together
to create tremendous drama and excitement.However, my favorite thing about Ciji has to be the songs.After three seasons of listening to Kenny put
on his public domain records that don’t even qualify as music, it was so nice
to see music become such a big part of the series here, to listen to Ciji sing real songs and also sing them really
well.Plus, this gave episode directors
the chance to use music and visuals in a cool, interesting, cinematic way that
was probably pretty unusual on TV in 1982-1983.

Also,
and this is something I didn’t really think about until we were watching the
concluding eps of the season, but the death of Ciji ranks as one of the best
stories on the whole series because of the way that literally everyone in the cast becomes
involved.I’m gonna focus on later
seasons (particularly my much cherished season six and the saga of Val’s
babies) to see if the big storylines have this similar effect, in which
everyone is a part of it.Here, not only
does Ciji link every character on the show together, but her death in Celebration propels us into a
murder mystery that creates a fabulous, “Everybody’s a suspect,” feeling of
paranoia and fright throughout the cul-de-sac.

In
fact, this season is so good that, as I noted, even Kenny and Ginger get some
material to work with, also through the Ciji storyline.While they are still the most underutilized
part of the cast and sit out the most episodes (A New Familyand The Morning Afterspring immediately to mind), they are actually given some stories and
something to work with, to the point that by the final moments of the season, I
was able to boldly declare that I no longer hated the characters, something I
never thought I would say.This also
tells me that someone behind the scenes was really paying attention and was
making sure that everyone who gets a credit in the scrolling squares is
represented as a valid character on the series with a purpose for being there.

Time
for the season highs and lows.Let’s
start with the high.What was the best
episode of season four?I had to think
about this, because even with the season fresh in my mind, it’s sorta just
turning into this blur of brilliance as I try to recall through the eps.I guess I’ll go with the obvious answer and
say Celebration, which does a
brilliant job of both paying off storylines that have been going on all season
while also launching off new stories for the concluding four eps of the season
as well as a good chunk of season five yet to come.This episode feels so BIG and so EPIC that it
could work as a season finale all of its own.Plus, it was just stylishly done, and the last five minutes with Ginger
singing “You’re the One,” the zoom-in on Ciji’s face on that poster, and the
dissolve to her dead body on the beach are unforgettable and I feel anyone that
sees the show always remembers this specific moment very well, no matter how
long ago they watched it.So yeah, Celebrationgets my vote for season
four’s best episode.

The
worst?Easily The Block Party, but I wanna make clear that it wasn’t BAD, you
know?However, if you absolutely had to skip a season four episode, this
would be the one to pick, because the main storyline of it (Mack and his
drunken dying father) is very standalone and singular and doesn’t really have
any repercussions for the rest of the season, aside from the argument that
perhaps Mack decides to marry Karen so shortly after this because he sees his
father’s sad life as an old man and doesn’t want that to happen to him.But for the most part the episode was kinda
boring and I just plain didn’t like looking at Mack’s dad, who I just found
unpleasant and annoying.Shallow?Perhaps, but there you go.However, this episode is located right near the
middle of the season and things immediately pick up for the next ten episodes
that conclude the season, so I can’t be too hard on this, which is a tremendous
improvement from the bottom dwellers of seasons one, two, and three.

My
conclusion is that season four was even better than I remembered it being and I
spent a good majority of it just staring at the TV in awe at how skilled the
writing, directing, and acting was.I
could also sense the show exciting My Beloved Grammy in a new way.I haven’t asked, but I get the feeling that
throughout the first three seasons, she might have been a smidge confused for
way I am so God damned enthused for this series, but now I think she’s starting
to get to my level as we watched this season.Seriously, it’s just so gripping.I would defy someone to start watching season four and not have to power
through the whole season as soon as possible; once it gets its hooks in you,
you just can’t turn away.I think this
was proven during the season by looking at the viewer numbers alone.I remind you that season three finished the
year at #43 while season four jumped up to #20, a huge increase that I’m sure
the network suits noticed and got excited over.This increase will only continue as we get season five (#11) and season
six (#9).I will say it hurts me that Dallas is still getting so many more viewers than KL (it finished #2 for this season), but
I have to remind myself that it came first and people like to stick to what
they know, and I will also concede that the 1982-1983 season was one of Dallas’ best and most exciting, so I’ll
give it a break in this instance.

So
that about it does it for season four, which is clearly the best season we have
seen thus far.In fact, for those who
are following me in my ranking of the seasons in total, we now have season four
ranked as #1, followed by season two at #2, season one at #3, and season three
ranking #4.Do you agree with my list
thus far?Disagree?Write and tell me why!

Okay,
that’s my reflection on this brilliant year of television.Coming up next is yet another brilliant year
of television.We are going to meet
William Devane as Greg Sumner, unveil a new, exciting, pulse-pounding version
of the theme song, and see some of the KL’s
most memorable and dramatic storylines ever as we get into season five, starting with The People vs. Gary Ewing.

The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com):When Laura
realizes that Richard is really gone, she tells the police, and everyone else,
that Richard killed Ciji. Jeff Munson offers Kenny a job and Ginger a contract
in Nashville, so the Wards decide to move. Diana and
Chip decide to go to New York after all. Karen tells her about Chip and Ciji's
affair in an attempt to get her to stay. Gary's preliminary hearing is coming
up, but Gary's spirit is broken and he won't cooperate. Mitch thinks if Gary
would work with them he could get the charges dropped. Abby wants Mitch to
request Gary must go to a sanitarium as a condition of release. Mitch says no,
so Abby fires him and asks Westmont to represent Gary. Val visits Gary, and she
tells him to shape up because while he's playing martyr in jail, the real
killer is on the loose. She also tells him if he respected Ciji, he would do
all he could to find the real murderer. Roland Mackey, a private investigator,
tells Lilimae he is looking for Tony Fenice, and shows her a flyer with Chip's
picture on it. Lilimae shows the flyer to Karen. Karen runs up to Diana's room,
but Diana has already left.

Welcome
to Willing Victims, our season four
finale of KL.As this episode began, I noted with interest
two things about who’s behind the scenes this week.First off, this episode is written by Peter Dunne.I don’t know if I’ve brought him
up yet, but he’s a big deal to KL fanatics
and is generally credited with really kicking the show into high gear during
season four.During my first viewing of
the series, I paid more attention to the actors and the cast roster and how
that changed and evolved over the course of the series, but I didn’t really
tend to notice who was working behind the scenes or as the supervising
producers for certain seasons.Now,
thanks in no small part to the exceptionally knowledgeable posters on theKL SoapChat message board (which
everyone should go off and join right away), I’m becoming more aware of who was
working to shape the show and its stories and characters during certain
junctures of the series.

Okay,
so Peter Dunne serves as the supervising producer starting here in season four,
and he’ll continue that roll throughout seasons five and six, as well.Honestly, that says it all.If I had a resume that said I was supervising
producer of KL for seasons four,
five, and six, and it had absolutely nothing else on it besides that, I would
still go to my grave a happy man, very proud of the excellent work I did and
the art I helped to contribute to the world.However, Dunne has a big resume which includes lots of other credits,
and what’s probably most interesting, something that we’re not going to really
discuss for a couple of seasons, is that during the 1985-1986 season, Dallas and KL swapped producers.Peter Dunne moved over to work on the dreadful dream season of Dallas while David Paulsen (last discussed as the writer of our
tenth Brief Dallas Interlude, Jock’s Will) moved over from his post on
Dallas to be supervising producer on KL for its seventh season.That’s going to be an interesting topic to
discuss when we get there, because we all saw how the ninth season of Dallas turned out, I.E. it sucked really
hard and set the tone for the next five fucking seasons to follow.How could Dunne do such amazing work on KL and then serve as producer for such a
shitty season of Dallas?

In
any case, that’s not really important to the topic at hand.I just bring up Peter Dunne because he’s been
our producer all throughout this fourth season and he serves as the writer of Willing Victims.The other interesting thing to note is that
series creator David Jacobs (the genius pictured below) serves as the man behind the camera and directs
this week’s episode, his first time doing so.We’ve discussed his scripts several times in the past, starting with our
very first Brief Dallas Interlude (Reunion: Part One) as well as Interludes
two and four (Reunion: Part Twoand Return Engagements).In addition, he wrote the KL Pilot that introduced us to this
wonderful world and he wrote Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, the episode that first introduced us to Lilimae and
explored her turbulent relationship with Val.Now he’s the director and he’s going to end up directing eight eps, with
his last directorial effort being the double whammy of brilliance Noises Everywhere: Part One and Noises Everywhere: Part Two, from season
nine (hardcore KL fans should
immediately remember what those eps
are all about).Anyway,
Willing Victims is his first time
working as the director of an ep, and I immediately noticed that he brought a
lot of energy and style to the proceedings, an energy unique and different from
some of the other directors I’ve admired throughout the course of the last 74
eps.For instance, we begin the show
with Val running.As I watched her run,
I noted that there is a “full circle” feeling to this, because what was the
very first thing we saw as we began season four with A Brand New Day?That’s
right, it was Val going for a run.Now
here we are in the season finale and the ep begins the same way.Yes, I’m well aware that Val goes running in
a ton of eps, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we begin the premiere
of season four and the finale of season four with the same scene.Also, on the topic of stylistic flourishes,
Jacobs makes a cool choice here when Val runs directly into the camera, which
sorta goes blurry and un-focuses before refocusing on poor Gary in his prison
cell.Nice directorial work!

Val
is still coming to Gary’s defense, not believing for a second that he killed
anybody.However, Lilimae has an extra
harsh line early in the ep when she’s talking to Val and she gets real firm and
says, “Gary Ewing kills people!”This has to be the peak of Lilimae’s distaste
for Gary.I know I’m not crazy when I
say that, at some point down the line, Lilimae and Gary become friendly again,
but right here Lilimae really hates him and seems to truly believe he’s a murderer.I have to wonder if there is even any
awkwardness in her future when Lilimae has to be like, “Oooooooooooh, Gary, I’m
sorry I thought you killed Ciji back in season four, ooooooooooooh.”

What
is Gary thinking at this point, by the way?I’m really not sure if Gary actually truly believes that he killed Ciji
or if he just is punishing himself for being a drunken mess.I kinda think he’s just given up, much like
the Beast in the big fight scene with Gaston from Beauty and the Beast; you know what I’m saying?Like, Gary is just sorta sitting in prison
like a lump, barely talking to anyone, not trying to fight these charges
against him, just sorta accepting this as his fate.I think he’s just feeling like such a loser
for being a hardcore alcoholic and for all the drama that’s gone on throughout
the last year that he’s just sorta resigned to sitting in prison, doing
nothing, figuring that’s where he belongs, but I don’t believe that he truly
thinks he’s the murderer of Ciji.

Late
in the ep, Val pays Gary a visit in that glass wall/telephone room that you
always see in prisons on TV shows.Gary
gets mad and yells and is like, “Get out of my life!”Somehow, Val manages to calm him down and get
him to listen to her, at which point she gives a great big speech about how
she’s seen him in all of his drunken states throughout their time together, and
even though he gets angry and nasty and has a bad temper, he’s never gotten
violent.This is slightly contradictory,
as we saw him have an epic bar fight back in the Bottom of the Bottleeps and he also gave Val a black eye (although
I think that was pretty much an accident, so I’ll cut him a break).Her basic point, which I think she manages to
get through to him, is that he is not a man who would murder another person, no
matter how drunken he was at the time, and that he’s wasting time lying in
prison.The real killer is still wandering around out in the
world, so Gary isn’t helping anyone by taking the blame for Ciji’s death.

Meanwhile,
after Richard blew town last week, Laura has become convinced that he is, in fact, the one true
murderer.While this could come off as a
silly plot contrivance if handled by a less deft pen, this does work for me,
especially when I try to put myself into Laura’s shoes.Even though I have loved Richard throughout
his entire run on the show and I tend to act like Karen and rush to his defense
in many situations, he did hold Laura
and Jason 2 hostage at gunpoint just a little over a year ago, demonstrating
tremendous mental instability.Not only
that, but back inCelebration, when
his jealousy of Laura and Ciji’s muff-diving reached the tipping point, he got
violent on Ciji, grabbed her by the hair, and threw her out of the house.So, yeah, considering that Ciji was dead just a few minutes after that
occurred, I could see why Laura is quick to blame Richard.

I
also wanna note that this episode doesn’t start right off the bat with Laura
knowing that Richard is gone.Instead,
he’s just kinda missing and she is waiting to hear from him or see him turn up
before, at a certain point, she realizes that he has left her and is not coming
back.It’s around this point that she
gets Mack and Karen together for a talk and declares that Richard killed Ciji,
showing lots of examples for why this is so.She says how he got all his affairs in his order, got his money issues
worked out, tidied up his issues with the restaurant, all before disappearing
from town forever because he was the one who killed Ciji.She declares that she’s going to tell the
police about this and name Richard as the culprit, even though Karen disagrees
with her and tells her not to do so.

Watching
this as a viewer, I have to wonder: How many people would have actually put
money on Richard being the killer?I
remind you that when I first watched this, I didn’t actually know who killed
Ciji, but I also didn’t really think all that much about it, because I thought
it was very obvious that it was Chip.Chip has the best motive; we’ve seen him get violent on Ciji in private
conversation with her, she was refusing to have an abortion even though he
wanted her to, and he was two-timing her with Diana and was probably starting
to get annoyed with her nagging.To me,
there was never any doubt that Chip was the one, and while I recognized Laura’s
perspective, I never bought into it, especially since I knew upon first
watching that Richard had left the show.Somehow I didn’t think the writers would have an off-screen revelation
that Richard was the killer or just have him disappear from the show, be
announced as the killer, and then just stay gone from the series; that wouldn’t
be classy or smart the way the writing tends to be.

Laura
gets my favorite scene in this whole ep, which calls back to Gary trashing the
shit out of his bedroom back in The Loudest Word.With Richard gone,
Laura has to go down to Daniel and do a lot of the work herself.The stress of everything going on starts to
get to her and, finally, when she has a moment all by herself in the kitchen,
she just starts going to town and trashing the place.She knocks over a shelf of pots and pans and
then grabs a pan and just starts beating the shit out of everything in the
kitchen with it, throwing stuff across the room and freaking out.This is all done in an unbroken shot, no
fancy editing, so you gotta know what a pain in the ass it must have been to do
multiple takes of this and have to totally redress the set just to have
Constance trash it again.When she’s
finally finished smashing stuff, she just sorta leans up against the wall and
covers her face and starts to cry.Here,
the camera slowly starts to pan away from her, as if this is too intimate and
personal for us to even be voyeurs to.Another aspect of this scene I dig is the complete lack of music; it’s
total silence until Laura starts going to town on the pots and pans.Finally, I just found this super relatable;
haven’t we all at some point lost it
and had to start breaking stuff in a fit of anger?It doesn’t matter that we logically know it
makes no sense; we just get that pissed off that we start trashing.What a fabulous moment and an episode
highlight.

Meanwhile,
Chip is finally officially going to New York.This is something he’s been kinda sorta threatening to do ever since
about Loss of Innocence, but now he’s
really going and Diana wants to go with him.Karen is very opposed to Diana going, but in the first half of the
episode, I think it’s mostly because Karen just plain doesn’t like Chip.I’m not sure anyone at this point is truly
aware of how violent and dangerous Chip really is (the only person who was
aware of it is now lying dead).Karen
just gets an uncomfortable feeling from him; she doesn’t know precisely why,
but she does know that she wants Diana to stay here in California, not run off
to New York with Chip.

Late
in the ep, Lilimae is outside watering the plants or something like that when a
mysterious man with a moustache arrives (but remember it’s 1983 and it was
still against the law for a man to not have a moustache).This man is a private investigator and his
name is Ronald Mackey and he is played by Joe George (pictured below).The guy’s IMDb page is pretty big, but the
only thing I recognize him from is a super earlySeinfeldepisode, The Stakeout(that’s the one where George first invents Art Vandelay).Anyway, he shows up to have a chat with
Lilimae and asks her if she’s seen a guy named Tony Fenice hanging around, then
he produces a black and white picture of Chip.Lilimae looks at it and then tells a bit of a fib.Even though the picture is clearly Chip with
sorta different hair and a beard, she tells Mackey that she’s never seen this
guy before.

Meanwhile,
Karen is trying her hardest to dissuade Diana from leaving.I should probably note that, after finishing
this ep, I did a bit of a status update and asked My Beloved Grammy who, at
this point, ranks as her favorite and least favorite character.She said her favorite character is Karen (an
excellent choice) and that her least favorite character is Diana.My Beloved Grammy’s exact quote was, “Diana
could leave the show forever and I would never even think about her,” making me
wonder how she’s going to react to all the Diana-related shenanigans of season
five.Anyway, I bring that up because,
once again, Diana is acting like a whiny little bitch and not listening to what
her mother has to say to her.We also
get a nice little callback to a character I didn’t really care for, Uncle Joe,
when Karen says that if Diana must go to New York, she should stay with Uncle
Joe (it would be a pretty nifty little callback if she mentioned Jessica Walter
from back in Reunion, but she doesn’t
do so).Diana’s having none of it; she
is moving to New York with Chip and that is final.

Minutes
before the episode is about to come to its conclusion, Karen wanders over to
Val’s house and has a chat with Lilimae.At this point, Lilimae mentions the private investigator who came by
earlier, and how Chip is wanted in Seattle (shout out!) for some prior violent
offense.At this point, we get a rare
moment of bad acting from Michele Lee, I’m sorry to say.Still love you, Michele, but this isn’t your
finest work.See, she gets all scared
and runs across the street, back to her own house.This part is fine, if a little bit
over-the-top, but then she bursts into Diana’s room and realizes her daughter
is gone.She opens her closet and almost
all the clothes are gone from it now, at which point Karen grabs like, a shirt
or something, holds it up to her face, and starts to moan in a very theatrical
matter, “Oh, Diana, oh, Diana!”It’s way
too much and made me cringe a little bit, but I forgive it cuz Michele is
usually brilliant and she has been brilliant in the past and will be brilliant
in the future; this is just a rare misstep.

From
this scene, we dissolve to a bit of a final montage before the episode/season
ends, and I note this montage because it has a cool dissolve that we are going
to see for, I think, something like ninety episodes in a row in the future,
since this shot makes its way into the scrolling squares for the opening
credits of seasons five, six, and seven (and maybe eight, too; I can't remember).It’s a shot of Abs looking out the window of The Beach House and then a
dissolve to Val sitting in a chair in her living room, looking out her own
window.It’s a nice dissolve, and I
noted it immediately since I recognized it from the opening of the next three
seasons (I always thought it was cool that one of the scrolling squares in the
opening had a dissolve going on it; stylish).This is our final scene before our “Executive Producers” credit and the
conclusion of the ep.

So
that’s the end of the ep, but there is one last thing I wanna discuss, and I
felt like saving it for the end to show at least some respect for two characters I have been ragging on since the
very beginning of the show, Kenny and Ginger.Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is Kenny and Ginger’s final episode and
we never see either of them ever again (aside from a very brief and completely
worthless cameo from Kim Lankford in the 1997 reunion movie, Back to the Cul-De-Sac).Okay, so what are the circumstances which
precipitate their evacuation from the series forever?

Well,
after the shenanigans of the last year and the fact that Kenny and Ginger no
longer feel like they have many friends in Seaview Cicle, the two decide to
move to Nashville after Kenny gets a job offer from Munson (meaning, I suppose,
that things are now cool between the two gentlemen, so that’s nice).Since Kenny has been out of work since about
halfway through the season, there’s good reason to take this job offer, so he
accepts it and we get one final scene between the two of them in bed.Even if these characters generally bored me,
I will say I’m glad they get a legitimate exit and a final scene together; we
don’t just start season five and some character is like, “Kenny and Ginger
moved away,” or something like that.Instead, the theme song kicks in with a sorta gentle, melodic quality,
playing much slower than it usually does, as the two lie in bed and discuss the
future for themselves and Erin Molly.I
guess it’s pretty nice to see that, after Kenny’s adultery problems throughout
seasons one and two, the couple have managed to make it work out, have had a
baby that they clearly love, have fixed their marriage, and that Kenny has also
finally truly accepted Ginger’s desire to be a singer.Now, instead of stifling it, he’s encouraging
her to use her talent in Nashville.While this scene is hardly the most exciting portion of the episode, I’m
still glad it’s here to put a little bow on the characters before they move
away forever.

Also,
it’s time for a big revelation of my
own, and that is the fact that I no longer hate
Kenny and Ginger.Way back in my Pilot writeup, I used the word “hate,” and called them the toxic
bores and bad actors and all of that stuff.However, throughout these four seasons, it wound up being way less
painful to watch their storylines than I remembered it being, and season four
was so good and so well written that the writers actually gave them some story
and materials to work with, which helped to dull my hatred of them.Just to be clear, I’m not saying that I
suddenly like the characters or am
super sad to see them go; I’m just saying that I’ve decided “hate” was a strong
word and they’re not nearly as toxic as I may have remembered.

The
basic problem is that, for most of their run, they didn’t really get a
chance.I think it’s interesting to jump
back to the start of the series and reflect that, while the two were introduced
in Pilot, they then immediately sat
on the bench for episodes two and three, Community Spiritand Let Me Count the Ways,
which pretty much set the tone for how the writers would treat these characters
throughout their time on the series; they always came last in the roster, and I
don’t even have to do any research to know that they sit out more eps than any
other main cast members on the show.In
fact, I’m gonna go ahead and say that, now, I kinda feel sorry for them,
because I’m sure the actors wanted more interesting stuff for their characters
to do (to the point that James Houghton wound up writing the episode Possibilities,which was all about Kenny and Ginger).So my basic point is that while I’m not sad
that they’re leaving and I’ll probably never think about them in the next ten
seasons, they weren’t nearly as bad as I remembered and they did, every now and
then, have their moments, most of them contained within season four, when it
felt like the writers were finally giving them something to do.

The
last thing I’ll say about this ep is that while it ends on a series of
cliffhangers (Diana running off to New York with Chip, Gary awaiting trial for
murdering Ciji, Richard disappearing, and so on), it ends on a more quiet note
than other seasons have or will.I won’t
spoil the finale of season five at this point, except to say that it’s just
PACKED and a ton of shit happens really really fast all within the last five
minutes of that season, whereas this one is more mellow, more gentle.It’s interesting to note that other shows
would probably make Celebrationthe
season finale, the cliffhanger being the simply fact that Ciji has been
killed.I like how KL has Ciji die and then spends four episodes setting up suspects
and excitement so that there’s just a ton of shit going on as we reach the
final episode of the season.

So
that about does it for Willing Victims
as well as the entire fourth season of KL.This was a great season finale that director
David Jacobs brought a lot of style and class to.It sets up so many things to unfold
throughout season five that, if I was alive in 1983, it would actually
physically hurt me to have to wait
all those long months for a new episode.What more can you ask for in a season finale?

The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com):Val is booked and questioned.
Abby goes to jail and has Gary sign over power of attorney to her. When she finds
out Val confessed, Abby laughs and says, "That's so Val." Abby wants
Mitch to get Val's confession thrown out. Mitch tells Abby she'd better determine
what is more important - keeping Val and Gary apart, or getting Gary out of
jail. Police bring Val to Ciji's to recreate the fight. Other police show up
with Gary. Gary's really upset, and says Val has nothing to do with it. Police
have to restrain them. Lilimae tells Chip it was his leaking Val's story that
started this whole mess, and kicks him out. Chip tries to charm Lilimae, but
she's no longer buying it. Police release Val. Richard has decided to leave
Laura, but doesn't tell her. He liquidates his assets and takes care of
unfinished business, packs, and secretly leaves.

As
I sat down to write about The Burden of
Proof, at first I was like, “What was that one about again?”I was starting to think it might have been
one of the less amazing of the seven eps My Beloved Grammy and I watched upon
our most recent visit, but as soon as I read over my notes on the ep, I
immediately realized that was inaccurate, that there’s actually a ton of stuff
to say about this week’s ep.While a
good majority of the show this week is devoted to the continuing saga of “Who
Killed Ciji?” and Gary’s incarceration and Val acting like she killed her and
all that, I think the most important thing to note about this episode is that
it marks the final (more or less) appearance of The Plesh as Richard
Avery.Yeah, he’ll be back for a guest
spot in two episodes way down the line (the 200th and 201st
episodes of the series, not to imply that those feel really far away at this point in time or anything), but this is the
last time John Pleshette appears as a part of the regular cast of KL and I wanna spend a good deal of time
discussing his final moments on the series and how they made me feel.

But
first, let’s jump through the other characters and what’s going on with them
this week.I kinda wanna save my
thoughts on Richard and his exit for the ending, since his final moments are
also the final moments of the ep and they are the parts that resonate most
strongly with me in The Burden of Proof.We open the show with, I’m gonna declare it,
some stock ADR dialogue recycled from last week’s show.See, we start on a shot of the police station
and we hear Val’s voice describing the events of the night of Celebration, and I’m absolutely sure
that they just went and reused dialogue from last week, in which she was
describing these events to, I think, Karen.The dialogue goes something like, “She backed me up against the wall and
she was saying horrible things,” something like that, and it’s absolutely the
same and I felt really smart for noticing it, even though I know nobody besides
myself cares.

But
anyway, to get us up to date, last week’s episode ended with Val doing
something very stupid, driving herself to the police station and declaring, “I
killed Ciji.”Now we are starting to see
the repercussions of that, but I definitely get the sense that none of the
cops, neither Detective Baines (pictured above) nor the stereotypical angry tough male cop dude,
really believe that Val did it.Her
story just doesn’t really hold much water, and it’s kinda based in a bizarre
fantasy that she has concocted for herself.In fact, sitting here and looking through my notes, I can’t exactly
remember all the details of how Val reaches this conclusion, or how her story
goes.It’s something like she thinks she
actually killed Ciji when she hit the table, even though she was alive when Val
left, and then Gary came back later and found the body and decided to hide
it.You see what I mean?There’s a lot of leaps of the imagination in
her story, this weird need to take the blame for something she didn’t do, and I
think the cops sense that, too.

There’s
a cool little stylistic cut done near the middle of the episode, involving the
idea of retracing steps on the night of the murder.First, we see the cops taking Gary for a walk
on the beach, in the area where he woke up in the opening moments ofLoss of Innocence.They’re hoping to jog his memory and break
through the alcohol-induced fogginess in his mind, but they have little
success.Then, we immediately cut to the
same thing being done (via different cops) with Val, this time in Ciji’s
apartment.They take her there to look
around and remember the argument she had with Ciji.While in the middle of retracing her steps,
Gary comes walking in with the other cops and there’s this big, dramatic scene
where he’s, like, trying to wrestle out of the arms of the cops so he can get
over to Val.Now that he sees her in
person and knows what she’s up to, incarcerating herself because of some
bizarre need to protect him, he sorta
flips.Aside from shouting a few things
at Val and struggling with the cops, Gary isn’t able to do much in this scene,
and he is quickly removed from the premises.

Meanwhile,
Lilimae has finally had it with Chip.After nearly a whole season of having him living in the house, she
finally tells him he needs to pack up and leave.The reason she has finally had enough is
because she blames Chip leaking the “Booze and Women” story to the press for
all the crap that’s going down and, in a way, she’s kinda right.Gary started unraveling when this occurred
and he pretty much returned to drinking in the exact same episode that the story
leaked, To Have and to Hold(remember
it was the sorta cliffhanger of that ep, Gary holding a glass of bourbon in his
hand, contemplating drinking it) and that has further unraveled to all the
shenanigans that are now going down with Ciji’s death.I also think Chip’s little confession that he
was sleeping with Ciji in The Fatal Blowreally
alarmed Lilimae, even more than she appeared to be alarmed during the scene in
question.My theory is that this little
confession sorta caused her to open her eyes about the way Chip really is, that
he’s a con artist and a liar and possibly very dangerous.

Even
though I’ve said a few times how weird it is that Chip just sorta gets to live
rent-free under the same roof as Lilimae and Val for almost a whole season,
Julie Harris does such a brilliant job of playing her character that her little
crush on Chip always comes off feeling both sweet and sad.I feel bad for Lilimae right here, because
she really did just plain like Chip;
she thought he was charming and sweet and she viewed him as a friend.Now that she’s starting to realize what a bad
man he really is, she has to order him out of the house, and you know that must
be hard for her to do.I don’t think I
can see a relationship this odd between an older woman and a younger man
working on any other show, but it always works on KL and I give most of the credit for that to Julie Harris. Anyway,
at first Chip argues and tries to charm Lilimae.It’s worked in the past and you can tell he
thinks it’ll work now, but not so much.Because of this, Chip returns to an older plan of his to ditch town and
move to New York.Somehow I’ve forgotten
to mention all this drama in any of the preceding episodes, but see, Chip was
originally saying he was gonna up and run to New York around the time of Loss of Innocence.For whatever reason, something changed his
plans and he decided to stay in California (I believe he claimed it was to help
Val and Lilimae deal with all this stress).Well, now that he’s being booted out of the house, he returns to his
original plan, and the question which remains is: Will Diana go with him?

Meanwhile,
while Gary’s in prison, Abs is up to her conniving ways with her lawyer.Now, probably because of seeing what a true
alcoholic Gary is and how quickly things turn to shit when he has a drink, Abs
has decided she wants to keep Gary in prison.Near the middle of the ep, she pays Gary a visit and they have a
conversation through that prison-glass-wall-telephone thing.In this scene, Gary signs over power of
attorney to Abs, which I guess is important.This is one of those storylines that I’m sure is important and exciting,
but for whatever reason I’m just having a hard time following.I’m really stupid sometimes and I confess
that I don’t actually really know what “Power of attorney,” means, but I assume
it’s important because My Beloved Grammy got very excited about all these
shenanigans.

Gary
gets a second prison visit this week, this time from Kenny.In addition to losing Richard this week, we
will also be losing Kenny and Ginger next (can you guess which one I’m most
upset about?), so I can sense the writers, at this point, sorta wrapping up any
lingering threads for Kenny and Ginger so they can be shipped neatly out of
town.This is actually a somewhat sweet
scene as Kenny and Gary manage to come to some understanding of all the shit
that went down throughout the last year and seem to reach some peace.It’s a quick little scene but demonstrates
the writers crossing their t's and dotting their i's as we get ready to say
goodbye to Seaview Circle’s most dynamic duo.

Meanwhile,
Karen and Mack are continuing to do everything in their power to figure out
this murder.Also, on the topic of Chip,
Mack finally declares, “I’m gonna call some people.”I take this to mean that he’s going to do some
research into who Chip really is and what his past is like, and I gotta say
it’s about time.Chip’s been in town so
long and this is the first time that Mack finally decides to use his power and
authority to figure out where this guy came from?Better late than never.

Okay,
that about does it for the other cast members this week; now let’s talk about
Richard.I tried to wash my brain out
during this episode and to watch it from the point-of-view of a first-run
viewer in 1983, and I wondered if I would be surprised that Richard is leaving
the show or if I would see it coming.I
think I’ve settled on the latter, because throughout the ep, there’s a real
sense of Richard getting his affairs in order and getting ready to leave town
forever; it hangs over this entire episode like a storm cloud threatening
rain.All through this week’s ep, we see
Richard taking care of little things that he’s been putting off, tidying things
up, obviously planning ahead for the fact that he’s about to blow town. For
instance, one of the first scenes with Richard in The Burden of Proof is him speaking on the phone, talking about
liquidating his assets and getting some money for Laura.A little bit later, Laura has some little
idea about the restaurant, something they could do to make it more
profitable.Richard gets sorta excited
and is like, “Hey, that’s a great idea; you should do it.”When Laura reminds him that he is the owner of Daniel, he starts to
sorta ask her if she thinks she could run it by herself.This is maybe a bit too much too soon in the
episode, don’t you think?If I was
Laura, I would find it mighty suspicious that Richard is suddenly asking me if
I could run the restaurant myself and even encouraging me to do so.

Next
up, we spot Richard finally fixing his drain pipe.Karen sees him on the ladder, fiddling with
it, and she comes over to chit chat with him.Since this is pretty much Karen and Richard’s last scene together on the
series (barring those two eps I mentioned, of course), it hit me rather
hard.The strange and loving friendship
between the two has always been one of my favorite parts of the first four
seasons of the show.There have been so
many points where, even if Richard was acting like a total dick, Karen would be
in his corner and stick up for him.Also, many of Richard’s sweetest moments have always been towards
Karen.Let’s not forget The Vigil, when Sid was lying
in the hospital and Richard brought Karen a catered gourmet breakfast and
helped her deal with her grief, or the very loving way he helped her cope
during the episodes following Sid’s death.Let’s also not forget that when Richard went loony back in Night, Karen was the only one coming to
his defense, telling everyone that he was not crazy and that he was not violent.Following the events of that episode, Karen
visited Richard at the sanitarium more than any other character, always making
sure to be a good friend and show her love.

Because
of all that beautiful stuff we’ve seen in the previous 73 episodes, this scene
resonates with a quality we wouldn’t have if we were watching another, less
wonderfully written show.See, Karen
says how they should have a dinner party and Richard and Laura should come over
and she tells Richard to “bring the wine.”There’s a sense that she’s looking forward to this occurring, but we the
audience get the feeling that it’ll never happen, that there’s something
ominous in the air.This is heightened
by Richard’s final question to Karen, when he asks, “How do you like being
married again?”She smiles and says, “I
love it,” and walks away.This is an
exchange of dialogue I’d forgotten, and now I can see what’s going through
Richard’s mind.He doesn’t want to live
here anymore, not in California, nowhere near where all his past failures and
problems have occurred.He’s thinking of
starting a new life and the wheels are turning in his head so quickly that he’s
already thinking of whether he could ditch Laura and Jason 3 and start a new
life with someone else.If Karen can
find happiness with a second spouse, why can’t he?

Speaking
of Jason 3, we also get a terrific little scene between him and Richard taking
place in the Avery living room.See,
Jason 3 is working on some sort of college school project about “the happiest
time he ever had,” and he’s focusing on a trip that he took with his parents
to, um, somewhere.Anyway, apparently he
was quite young when they went on this vacation (although, due to constantly
morphing into new people, Jason seems to always sorta stay the same age and
even, near the end of his time on the show, age in reverse in some bizarre way)
and Richard is surprised he remembers this trip at all.The
two sit on the floor and talk about all the fun they had and what they did
while they were away from home.Richard
looks melancholy, almost happy/sad at the same time, and I can only imagine the
swirl of contradictory thoughts racing through his head.I have to imagine that he’s having a bit of
guilt about what he’s planning to do.How can he sit here with his son, who he loves, and talk about the fun
they’ve had in the past, and then up and leave him later in the ep?At the same time, I have to wonder if Richard
is feeling like a failure all around, if he’s maybe telling himself that Laura
and Jason 3 and Daniel will all be better off without him, the man who can’t
hold down a job and opened a new business which has been struggling and is
probably going to go under very soon.

The
very last scene of the ep is Richard sorta going through the house, collecting
his shit, making sure he’s good and packed, and leaving.I’m not gonna lie; I started to get misty
here.I didn’t bawl like a little faggot
the way I may bawl for certain stories and scenes in our future, or the way I
bawl whenever I watch Titanic. Tears didn’t actually roll down my face, but my eyes got wet and watery and I felt very
emotional here. See,
Laura is holding Daniel on her lap and playing with him in the bedroom.Richard walks up to the door and looks in and
Laura doesn’t see him, but little Daniel does.Richard looks at the baby and he smiles and then he gives him a sorta
wave with just one finger.Next, he goes
downstairs and he’s about to leave when he pauses, looks at a beautiful black
and white picture of himself, Richard, Jason 3, and Daniel, and then decides to
take that picture with him.He goes
outside, gets in his car, drives away, stops the car briefly to get out and
look back over the cul-de-sac one last time, gets back in his car, drives
away, and boom, that’s the end of The
Burden of Proof.

It’s
yet another credit to The Plesh’s incredible acting that Richard is able to do
this, to up and leave his entire family behind without any warning, something
that is really a pretty shitty thing to do, and yet I end up feeling sorry for him.Somehow, Richard has always walked this tightrope where, no matter how
he behaved, I could always understand his feelings and sympathize.I really don’t know another actor who could
manage to be such an asshole and also be so sympathetic, often within the
confines of the same episode.Something
about the way The Plesh brought Richard to life has always made me able to
relate to him no matter how dire his behavior towards others could sometimes
get; I always seemed to understand that Richard was not inherently a bad person, but rather a man deeply
dissatisfied with his own life who consistently feels like a failure.

I
think my eyes got watery not just because of the heightened emotion of the
sequence and the excellent musical score, but also because Richard is leaving
the show and I am going to miss him.The
cast of KL is generally so strong
that it’s impossible to really decide who the best character is.A lot of my favorite characters aren’t even
on the scene yet, for instance, and the cast grows, changes, and evolves in
such a way that there’s always someone new and super interesting to focus
on.But I do think, for these first four
seasons, Richard is very nearly my favorite character.I think Karen is always going to be #1 in my
heart, but Richard is a comfortable #2 right after her, and he brought the most
energy, life, and intricacies to the first four seasons of this show.In addition, The Plesh seemed to understand
his character and be able to write for him in a way that was very special and
rare.In addition to being a tremendous
actor (way underrated, I must
reiterate), he also wrote eight fantastic episodes during his time as a cast
member, spanningBottom of the Bottle: Part Twothrough Daniel(with his
most shining writing masterpiece being the unforgettable Night).Whenever he stepped
up to the plate to contribute a script to the series, I would always pay
attention and know that I was gonna be in for an extra good, extra rich episode
of KL. In
fact, when I told My Beloved Grammy that this was Richard’s last episode, the
first question she asked was, “Does
he still write more episodes?”Even
though she generally doesn’t pay as much attention to who’s writing/directing
eps as I do, she still found herself noticing that his eps were of a higher
quality than the others.Now, even
though he doesn’t contribute anymore scripts to the show, he will be back in
the future to direct five eps,
starting with Homecomingnext season
and concluding with Simmer in
1991.I can’t wait to get to those eps
so I can pay attention to how The Plesh does behind the camera, not as the
writer but as the director.

One
last thing I wanna say, sorta related to the topic of cast members coming and
going throughout the fourteen years of the show.Well, clearly that’s going to happen a lot,
which is only natural for a long-running show.Indeed, the only people who are main cast members on the series from
start to finish are Michele Lee and Ted Shackelford.For the first four seasons, we’ve been pretty
consistent with our cast, only losing Don Murray at the start of season three.When we start season five, we will have, I
believe, our mast radical shift in the cast in the whole series, losing
Richard, Kenny, and Ginger and gaining the ball of excitement Ben along with a
character I can’t wait to discuss, Sumner (and, also, Diana gets a promotion to
main cast member next season). However,
the interesting thing about these shifts, and another credit to the quality of
the show, is I never feel that hurt by someone leaving, because someone super
interesting is generally just around the corner.In this instance, yes, I’m sad to see Richard
depart the show, but we’re about to get William Devane in the cast, and he’s
one of the best characters ever and I love him with all my heart, so it’s like
I barely have time to miss Richard, because Sumner comes into the proceedings
and is so awesome, so funny, and so brilliantly cast.Contrast this with Dallas, where the loss of cast members was brutal and would
generally disrupt the quality of the show in a very toxic way (Patrick Duffy’s
departure during season nine being the prime example, but Victoria Principal’s
exit is even worse and basically smears shit all over the last four years of
that show).

Okay,
that’s gonna do it for The Burden of Proof.I thought this was an excellent episode in
all sorts of ways, but especially as a swan song for Richard, who was
consistently brilliant and brought quality humor and drama to the series through many different factors for 74 episodes.All the
other proceedings with the other cast members this week come second for me; The Burden of Proof should be remembered
and respected for being our goodbye to Richard Avery, and I thought it did an
excellent job of balancing these bittersweet emotions as he blows town.

This
is very exciting, because now we just have one more episode left in season four
and then we’ll be done with this brilliant year of television.Coming up next, our season finale, Willing Victims.

About Me

I live in Seattle, Washington and am a recent college graduate who is currently stuck in a retail hole, but working to get out of it. My interests lie in reading, writing, editing, and proofreading. I love movies and television and I obviously have a very special love for KNOTS LANDING, because I have created an entire blog devoted to it. Feel free to comment on my blog or leave me an E-Mail anytime you want and I promise to get back to you.